“Mr. Edison, I don’t want to deal with plugging it in…just give me a bee hive and I’ll make my own candles”

Yes, change is hard. Yes, prototypes or first editions don’t work exactly the way you want to. But get used to it, because as cool as dinosaurs are, things change and good technologies help us immensely (i.e. light bulb).

And with the Tesla Roadster, the future isn’t some fuzzy, hazy thing. It’s right here and it works.

Max gave a pretty good rundown of what we saw Saturday and Santi actually knows what he’s talking about, so I’ll keep it short. I spend a lot of time in my car (like most people in Los Angeles) and I think I can say from my brief exposure that I wouldn’t mind spending most of that time in the Tesla Roadster. It’s a simple car by all accounts, unless you count the big expensive battery hogging up all the trunk space. For its price tag, it’s not particularly fast or powerful (this from a guy who hasn’t actually driven one) but there are a lot of options for the interior. Max made an interesting discovery after looking at one model that was raised off the ground: the bottom of the car is almost completely flat. You know, like a video game car. I am by no means a car genius, but I always figured all that stuff under my car was there for a reason. This leads me to the only logical conclusion: the Tesla Roadster runs on magic.Continue reading I Want One VII: Tesla Roadster

Getting a sneak peak at the Tesla Showroom was a great experience. I knew a little about the car from what I had read, but getting to speak to the director of parts and sales gave me much more insight as to how this mean little electric car works. Keep on reading if you want to learn a bit more about what’s under the Lotus Elise inspired carbon fiber bodywork (warning, this is gonna get a bit technical).Continue reading Tesla Roadster: Technical Babbling from a car nut

I’m not sure how, but Pilar and Roy managed to get the Velvetron crew into an opening event for the Tesla Showroom in Westwood last Saturday. It was a subdued gathering, with people more focused on the cars than each other – even more than is usual in Los Angeles. The showroom itself is more of a boutique than a real dealership, emphasizing style over substance: there didn’t seem to be anywhere to store vehicles, making it very unlikely that you would drive a car off the lot. Of course, the first shipment of 1000 vehicles hasn’t yet arrived, but the Roadsters have all been sold nonetheless – and the Tesla isn’t a traditional car: with a $109,000 price tag, a 125mph top speed, and styling that ensures competition from the Lotus Elise, the Tesla isn’t about bang for your buck – it’s about having an all-electric car that goes fast and looks good while generating no emissions aside from heat. While this doesn’t ensure environmental friendliness – coal-based power plants aren’t exactly green – it does mean that making it environmentally friendly is a matter of building green power plants, rather than replacing the vehicle. Such decoupling of the energy production from use would go a long way towards breaking our addiction to oil.Continue reading It’s Almost Here: The Tesla Showroom Opens in Westwood

I thought the Telsa Electric Roadster had been scrapped, but I was wrong! Gizmodo has a nice little roundup of reviews. The overall message? 211 ft-lbs of torque at 0 RPM is awful news for a transmission, but also an awful lot of fun.